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Chippendale News

The high road to Highwood

We’re always delighted to feature the work of former students, particularly one as talented as Colin Bate who now runs Highwood Furniture. So talented is Colin that he was voted Students’ Choice Student of the Year 2017, and has gone on to set up his business in Alyth, Perth & Kinross. He’s now working out …

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Building with bricks

It’s called brick building but it’s really an exercise in learning how to fashion many pieces of wood into one geometrically perfect circle. That was our two-day learning challenge this week, giving our students just 48 hours to fashion 32 carefully-cut pieces of pine into four layers to create a hollow wooden structure. Once the …

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The art of brick building

Learning to be a professional furniture designer and maker involves the acquisition of many skills, as well as the confidence to dream the impossible and make it happen. It’s a challenge for our students because our nine-month professional course is much shorter than many other competitor courses, so it’s therefore a learning process with a …

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Visual creativity

Every furniture school has to balance teaching students the skills they’ll need to be professional woodworkers with the creativity to design and make great furniture. It’s a balance that varies greatly between schools, with some establishments requiring students to achieve, for example, dovetail excellence before moving onto the next skill. The Chippendale school is a …

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And the winner is…

The winner of our first term bedside cabinet project is Grant Anderson, originally from Zimbabwe, for the level of craftsmanship he displayed. Learning how to make a bedside cabinet project is an exercise in acquiring a whole range of  skills, including turning handles, French polishing, spray lacquering and how to fashion strengthening keys. It’s also …

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